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Convening a Global Day to Destigmatize Abortions | Coming on March 28, 2024.

Posted September 1, 2023 by the inroads team

💚BECOME A CAMPAIGN PARTNER HERE | Form available in Spanish & English.

Building collective power for a world free of abortion stigma

“In our world divide and conquer must become define and empower” – Audre Lorde

At this critical moment in history when we face increased efforts to criminalize, stigmatize, and restrict abortion and bodily autonomy worldwide, we invite you to join forces to launch a global day of action to destigmatize abortions in our communities.

WHY

We envision a world where abortion care is centered around the needs and care of those who have abortions. Where stigma, fear, and misinformation about abortion are eliminated through collective organizing strategies that bring about deep narrative and cultural change.

We believe that we must address abortion stigma, along with intersecting stigmas, as a root issue that is moving us further away from our collective liberation, in order for deep and sustainable change to happen around abortion globally, regionally, and locally.

While continuing to support the convening groups for September 28 – International Safe Abortion Day, currently the only global day centering abortion and abortion justice. We see an exciting opportunity to build from this important work, coordinating with the Sept 28th organizing spaces, to create additional global organizing efforts centered on abortion justice, especially celebrating abortion across movements, destigmatizing abortion, and building a world free from stigma.

When we take the time to look at the concrete impacts of stigma and how to dismantle it, we raise awareness about the importance of breaking away from the shame, silence, and isolation that stigma causes and bring about generative, caring, and healing ways to talk about abortion.

GOALS

We believe that co-convening a collective, simultaneous, and regular global campaign centered on destigmatizing abortion could be a powerful advocacy and organizing tool to:

Bring awareness to the role stigma plays in the negative realities surrounding abortion access and care.
Mobilize our communities to take action to identify and tackle the abortion stigma that is often reproduced pervasively & inadvertently across all levels and areas of society.
Create more global spaces to share our abortion stories with the goal of breaking away from the stigma.
Shift the conversation and change the stigmatizing narratives around abortion.
Mobilize resources for the front-line collectives leading stigma-busting abortion justice efforts worldwide.
Highlight the intersections of abortion stigma, reflecting how it is connected with multiple systems of oppression like racism, ableism, heterosexism, transphobia, and colonialism.
Strengthen the abortion justice ecosystem and build collective power for transformative change.
Collaboratively build a world without abortion stigma where all people are free to access and experience abortion in the way they want and need to.

WHO

This effort is coordinated by inroads and is being co-created and co-convened by a working group of reproductive justice organizations, feminist collectives, stigma-busting artists, feminist funders, abortion providers, community workers, international networks, and NGOs across the world.

Coordinated by inroads: The International Network for the Reduction of Abortion Discrimination and Stigma.

💚BECOME A CAMPAIGN PARTNER HERE

Partners will receive updates, toolkits with editable communications assets to amplify, events information, and other invitations to partner to launch and amplify this global day of action together.
Form currently available in Spanish & English.